Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'll be very brief. The government's view remains that the amendments in the bill demonstrate the government's commitment to protecting the integrity and sustainability of the migration system. The arrival control determination legislation is an important addition to the government's ability to regulate travel to Australia. I make the point again—and we've covered this repeatedly, so we are going to need to finish this debate and move on—that, currently, this can be achieved only through individually assessing each visa to determine whether there are grounds to cancel the visa. This is a task that the department does in all manner of visa categories and for individual visas every day, but it does take time and it's not appropriate for circumstances where there's an urgent response, at scale, that is required. In the circumstances where individual visas are cancelled, which is a far more draconian measure—the alternative to the measure in this bill to suspend the travel ability to Australia—then there is no compensation scheme that applies.

I don't know what else we can say except I'll finish on this point: the minister retains the power and the ability to exempt certain individuals in appropriate circumstances and still allow them, by issuing a certificate to come to Australia. That's a power that does not rest with the minister personally. It doesn't have to be exercised with the minister. It's not one or two a week in between other things. It's a power that can be given and will be given to the department, administered in the normal way for those kinds of circumstances which a number of members have outlined in the debate. We do need to move on, so I'll leave it there.

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